Closer Look at 19" Monitor Features. Part V.. Page 10

A new roundup continuing the series of 19-inch monitor reviews is ready! This article is devoted to LCD monitors with 5:4 aspect ratio and a native resolution of 1280x1024 pixels. We will discuss their color reproduction quality (and the color gamut), response time (and the RTC error value), brightness and contrast. Today we will introduce to you ten solutions from Acer, Asus, LG, Dell and Samsung.

By default, the monitor’s brightness and contrast settings are set at 75. I achieved a 100nit brightness of white by setting them both at 64. The monitor controls its brightness through pulse-width modulation of the power of the backlight lamps at a frequency of 320Hz.

The picture grows completely dark when you set the brightness and contrast at zero. So, the minimum brightness of the screen is zero, too. There is no practical sense in that, but this is good news for people who have apprehensions about excessive brightness of LCD monitors.

Color gradients are reproduced flawlessly, without any banding.

The gamma curves look very good at the default settings. It’s hard to find any fault with them even if you don’t make allowances for the low-end category the monitor belongs to. Moreover, their shape doesn’t worsen at reduced values of contrast and the monitor still reproduces all the color tones it is expected to reproduce.

The color temperature setup is inaccurate. The monitor displays gray with a noticeable bluish hue. As a result, most users will find the Red mode most suitable while the default Normal mode is going to look too cold.

The monitor does not have response time compensation, so its average speed is 15.1 milliseconds GtG, i.e. three to five times that of RTC-enabled models. The matrix is fast on a black-white transition, but transitions between two halftones may take as long as 40 milliseconds.

The monitor’s brightness and contrast parameters are average.

All in all, the Dell E196FP is an inexpensive monitor that is going to suit fine for typical office work, i.e. for processing text documents, when you don’t need a low response time or an accurate reproduction of colors (as you have seen above, the color temperature setup of the E196FP is rather poor). It won’t do well as a home monitor for games and movies due to its slow matrix and lack of such features as quick switching between preset profiles, but will look good on a work desk, being superior to many of its opponents in the exterior design at least.